Titan (moon) Totally Explained

Everything about Titan Moon totally explained

Titan (TYE-tən, or as ) or Saturn VI is the largest moon of Saturn, the only moon known to have a dense atmosphere, and the only object other than Earth for which clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found.
Titan is primarily composed of water ice and rocky material. The dense atmosphere prevented understanding of Titan's surface until new information accumulated with the arrival of the Cassini–Huygens mission in 2004, including the discovery of liquid hydrocarbon lakes in the satellite's polar regions. These are the only large, stable bodies of surface liquid known to exist anywhere other than Earth. The surface is geologically young; although mountains and several possible cryovolcanoes have been discovered, it's relatively smooth and few impact craters have been discovered.
The atmosphere of Titan is largely composed of nitrogen and its climate includes methane and ethane clouds. The climate—including wind and rain—creates surface features that are similar to those on Earth, such as sand dunes and shorelines, and, like Earth, is dominated by seasonal weather patterns. With its liquids (both surface and subsurface) and robust nitrogen atmosphere, Titan is viewed as analogous to the early Earth, although at a much lower temperature. The satellite has thus been cited as a possible host for microbial extraterrestrial life or, at least, as a prebiotic environment rich in complex organic chemistry. Researchers have suggested a possible underground liquid ocean might serve as a biotic environment.

Discovery and naming

Titan was discovered on March 25, 1655, by the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens. Huygens was inspired by Galileo's discovery of Jupiter's four largest moons in 1610 and his improvements on telescope technology. Huygens himself made advances in the technology and his discovery of Titan owed "partly to the quality of his telescope and partly to luck". He named it simply Saturni Luna (or Luna Saturni, Latin for "Saturn's moon"), publishing in the 1655 tract De Saturni Luna Observatio Nova. After Giovanni Domenico Cassini published his discoveries of four more moons of Saturn between 1673 and 1686, astronomers fell into the habit of referring to these and Titan as Saturn I through V (with Titan then in fourth position). Other early epithets for Titan include "Saturn's ordinary satellite". Titan is officially numbered Saturn VI because after the 1789 discoveries the numbering scheme was frozen to avoid causing any more confusion (Titan having borne the numbers II and IV as well as VI). Numerous small moons have been discovered closer to Saturn since then.
The name Titan, and the names of all seven satellites of Saturn then known, come from John Herschel (son of William Herschel, discoverer of Mimas and Enceladus) in his 1847 publication Results of Astronomical Observations Made at the Cape of Good Hope. He suggested the names of the mythological Titans, sisters and brothers of Cronos, the Greek Saturn.

Orbit and rotation

Titan orbits Saturn once every 15 days and 22 hours. Like the Earth's moon and many of the other gas giant satellites, its orbital period is identical to its rotational period; Titan is thus tidally locked in synchronous rotation with Saturn. Its orbital eccentricity is 0.0288, and it's inclined 0.348 degree relative to the Saturnian equator.

Bulk characteristics

Titan is 5,150 km across, compared to 4,879 km for the planet Mercury and 3,474 km for Earth's moon. Before the arrival of Voyager 1 in 1980, Titan was thought to be slightly larger than Ganymede (diameter 5,262 km) and thus the largest moon in the Solar System; this was an overestimation caused by Titan's dense, opaque atmosphere, which extends many miles above its surface and increases its apparent diameter. Titan's diameter and mass (and thus its density) are similar to Jovian moons Ganymede and Callisto. Based on its bulk density of 1.88 g/cm³, Titan's bulk composition is half water ice and half rocky material. Though similar in composition to Dione and Enceladus, it's denser due to gravitational compression.
Titan is probably differentiated into several layers with a 3,400 km rocky center surrounded by several layers composed of different crystal forms of ice. Its interior may still be hot and there may be a liquid layer consisting of water and ammonia between the ice I crust and deeper ice layers made of high-pressure forms of ice. Evidence for such an ocean has recently been uncovered by the Cassini probe in the form of natural extremely low frequency (ELF) radio waves in Titan's atmosphere. Titan's surface is thought to be a poor reflector of ELF waves, so they may instead be reflecting off the liquid-ice boundary of a subsurface ocean. Surface features were observed by the Cassini spacecraft to systematically shift by up to 30 km between October 2005 and May 2007, which suggests that the crust is decoupled from the interior, and provides additional evidence for an interior liquid layer.

Atmosphere

Titan is the only known moon with a fully developed atmosphere that consists of more than just trace gases. Atmosphere thickness has been suggested ranging between 200 km and 880 km. Compare these figures to Earth's boundary, which lies at 100 km, with 99.999% of atmospheric mass lying below that altitude. (External Link

) The atmosphere of Titan is opaque at many wavelengths and a complete reflectance spectrum of the surface is impossible to acquire from the outside; it was this haziness that led to errors in diameter estimates.
   The presence of a significant atmosphere was first discovered by Gerard P. Kuiper in 1944 using a spectroscopic technique that yielded an estimate of an atmospheric partial pressure of methane of the order of 100 millibars (10 kPa). Observations from the Voyager space probes have shown that the Titanian atmosphere is denser than Earth's, with a surface pressure more than one and a half times that of our planet. It supports opaque haze layers that block most visible light from the Sun and other sources and renders Titan's surface features obscure. The atmosphere is so thick and the gravity so low that humans could fly through it by flapping "wings" attached to their arms. The Huygens probe was unable to detect the direction of the Sun during its descent, and although it was able to take images from the surface, the Huygens team likened the process to "taking pictures of an asphalt parking lot at dusk".
   The atmosphere is 98.4% nitrogen—the only dense, nitrogen-rich atmosphere in the solar system aside from the Earth's—with the remaining 1.6% composed of methane and trace amounts of other gases such as hydrocarbons (including ethane, diacetylene, methylacetylene, acetylene, propane, cyanoacetylene, hydrogen cyanide), carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, cyanogen, argon and helium. The hydrocarbons are thought to form in Titan's upper atmosphere in reactions resulting from the breakup of methane by the Sun's ultraviolet light, producing a thick orange smog. Titan has no magnetic field and sometimes orbits outside Saturn's magnetosphere, directly exposing it to the solar wind. This may ionize and carry away some molecules from the top of the atmosphere. In November 2007, scientists uncovered evidence of negative ions with roughly 10,000 times the mass of hydrogen in Titan's ionosphere, which are believed to fall into the lower regions to form the orange haze which obscures Titan's surface. Their structure isn't currently known, but they're believed to be tholins, and may form the basis for the formation of more complex molecules, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
   Energy from the Sun should have converted all traces of methane in Titan's atmosphere into hydrocarbons within 50 million years; a relatively short time compared to the age of the Solar System. This suggests that methane must be somehow replenished by a reservoir on or within Titan itself. That Titan's atmosphere contains over a thousand times more methane than carbon monoxide would appear to rule out significant contributions from cometary impacts, since comets are composed of more carbon monoxide than methane. That Titan might have accreted an atmosphere from the early Saturnian nebula at the time of formation also seems unlikely; in such a case, it ought to have atmospheric abundances similar to the solar nebula, including hydrogen and neon. A possible biological origin for the methane hasn't been discounted (see below). Observations by Cassini of the atmosphere made in 2004 also suggest that Titan is a "super rotator", like Venus, with an atmosphere that rotates much faster than its surface.
   Titan's ionosphere is also more complex than Earth's, with the main ionosphere at an altitude of 1,200 km but with an additional layer of charged particles at 63 km. This splits Titan's atmosphere to some extent into two separate radio-resonating chambers. The source of natural ELF waves (see above) on Titan is unclear as there doesn't appear to be extensive lightning activity. The Cassini spacecraft has used radar altimetry and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging to map portions of Titan during its close fly-bys of the moon. The first images revealed a diverse geology, with both rough and smooth areas. There are features that seem volcanic in origin, which probably disgorge water mixed with ammonia. There are also streaky features, some of them hundreds of kilometers in length, that appear to be caused by windblown particles. Examination has also shown the surface to be relatively smooth; the few objects that seem to be impact craters appeared to have been filled in, perhaps by raining hydrocarbons or volcanoes. Radar altimetry suggests height variation is low, typically no more than 150 meters. Occasional elevation changes of 500 meters have been discovered and Titan has mountains that sometimes reach several hundred meters to more than 1 kilometer in height.
   Titan's surface is marked by broad regions of bright and dark terrain. These include Xanadu, a large, reflective equatorial area about the size of Australia. It was first identified in infrared images from the Hubble Space Telescope in 1994, and later viewed by the Cassini spacecraft. The convoluted region is filled with hills and cut by valleys and chasms. It is criss-crossed in places by dark lineaments—sinuous topographical features resembling ridges or crevices. These may represent tectonic activity, which would indicate that Xanadu is geologically young. Alternatively, the lineaments may be liquid-formed channels, suggesting old terrain that has been cut through by stream systems. There are dark areas of similar size elsewhere on the moon, observed from the ground and by Cassini; it had been speculated that these are methane or ethane seas, but Cassini observations seem to indicate otherwise (see below).

Liquids

The possibility that there were seas of liquid methane on Titan were first suggested based on Voyager 1 and 2 data that showed Titan to have a thick atmosphere of approximately the correct temperature and composition to support them, but direct evidence wasn't obtained until 1995 when data from Hubble and other observations had already suggested the existence of liquid methane on Titan, either in disconnected pockets or on the scale of satellite-wide oceans, similar to water on Earth.
The Cassini mission affirmed the former hypothesis, although not immediately. When the probe arrived in the Saturnian system in 2004, it was hoped that hydrocarbon lakes or oceans might be detectable by reflected sunlight from the surface of any liquid bodies, but no specular reflections were initially observed. At Titan's south pole, an enigmatic dark feature named Ontario Lacus was the first suspected lake identified, possibly created by clouds that are observed to cluster in the area. A possible shoreline was also identified at the pole via radar imagery. Following a flyby on July 22, 2006, in which the Cassini spacecraft's radar imaged the northern latitudes (which are currently in winter), a number of large, smooth (and thus dark to radar) patches were seen dotting the surface near the pole. Based on the observations, scientists announced "definitive evidence of lakes filled with methane on Saturn's moon Titan" in January 2007. The Cassini–Huygens team concluded that the imaged features are almost certainly the long-sought hydrocarbon lakes, the first stable bodies of surface liquid found off Earth. Some appear to have channels associated with liquid and lie in topographical depressions. A smaller 80 km wide, flat-floored crater named Sinlap and a 30 km crater with a central peak and dark floor named Ksa have also been observed. Radar and Cassini imaging have also revealed a number of "crateriforms", circular features on the surface of Titan that may be impact related, but lack certain features that would make identification certain. For example, a 90 km wide ring of bright, rough material known as Guabonito has been observed by Cassini. This feature is thought to be an impact crater filled in by dark, windblown sediment. Several other similar features have been observed in the dark Shangri-la and Aaru regions. Radar observed several circular features that may be craters in the bright region Xanadu during Cassini's April 30, 2006 flyby of Titan.
Pre-Cassini models of impact trajectories and angles suggest that where the impactor strikes the water ice crust, a small amount of ejecta remains as liquid water within the crater. It may persist as liquid for centuries or longer, sufficient for "the synthesis of simple precursor molecules to the origin of life". While infill from various geological processes is one reason for Titan's relative deficiency of craters, atmospheric shielding also plays a role; it's estimated that Titan's atmosphere reduces the number of craters on its surface by a factor of two.

Cryovolcanism and mountains

Scientists have speculated that conditions on Titan resemble those of early Earth, though at a much lower temperature. Evidence of volcanic activity from the latest Cassini mission suggests that temperatures are probably much higher in hotbeds, enough for liquid water to exist. Argon 40 detection in the atmosphere indicates that volcanoes spew plumes of "lava" composed of water and ammonia. Cassini detected methane emissions from one suspected cryovolcano, and volcanism is now believed to be a significant source of the methane in the atmosphere. One of the first features imaged by Cassini, Ganesa Macula, resembles the geographic features called "pancake domes" found on Venus, and is thus believed to be cryovolcanic in origin.
The pressure necessary to drive the cryovolcanoes may be caused by ice "underplating" Titan's outer shell. The low-pressure ice, overlaying a liquid layer of ammonium sulfate, ascends buoyantly, and the unstable system can produce dramatic plume events. Titan is resurfaced through the process by grain-sized ice and ammonium sulfate ash, which helps produce a wind-shaped landscape and sand dune features.
A mountain range measuring 150 km long, 30 km wide and 1.5 km high was discovered by Cassini in 2006. This range lies in the southern hemisphere and is thought to be composed of icy material and covered in methane snow. The movement of tectonic plates, perhaps influenced by a nearby impact basin, could have opened a gap through which the mountain's material upwelled.

Dark terrain

In the first images of Titan's surface taken by Earth-based telescopes in the early 2000s, large regions of dark terrain were revealed straddling Titan's equator. Prior to the arrival of Cassini, these regions were thought to be seas of organic matter like tar or liquid hydrocarbons. Radar images captured by the Cassini spacecraft have instead revealed some of these regions to be extensive plains covered in longitudinal sand dunes, up to 330 meters high. Studies of dunes' composition in May, 2008, revealed that they possessed less water than the rest of Titan, and are most likely to derive from organic material clumping together after raining onto the surface.

Climate

Titan's surface temperature is about 94 K (−179 °C, or −290 °F). At this temperature water ice doesn't sublimate from solid to gas, so the atmosphere is nearly free of water vapor. The haze in Titan's atmosphere contributes to the moon's anti-greenhouse effect by reflecting sunlight away from the satellite, making its surface significantly colder than its upper atmosphere. The clouds on Titan, probably composed of methane, ethane or other simple organics, are scattered and variable, punctuating the overall haze. This atmospheric methane conversely creates a greenhouse effect on Titan's surface, without which Titan would be far colder. The findings of the Huygens probe indicate that Titan's atmosphere periodically rains liquid methane and other organic compounds onto the moon's surface. In October 2007, observers noted an increase in apparent opacity in the clouds above the equatorial Xanadu region, suggestive of "methane drizzle", though this wasn't direct evidence for rain. It is possible that areas of Titan's surface may be coated in a layer of tholins, but this hasn't been confirmed.
Simulations of global wind patterns based on wind speed data taken by Huygens during its descent have suggested that Titan's atmosphere circulates in a single enormous Hadley cell. Warm air rises in Titan's southern hemisphere—which was experiencing summer during Huygens' descent—and sinks in the northern hemisphere, resulting in high-altitude air flow from south to north and low-altitude airflow from north to south. Such a large Hadley cell is only possible on a slowly rotating world such as Titan. This cell creates a global band of low pressure—what is in effect a variation of Earth's Intertropical Convergence Zone. Unlike on Earth, however, where the oceans confine the ITCZ to the tropics, on Titan, the zone wanders from one pole to the other, taking methane rainclouds with it. This means that Titan, despite its frigid temperatures, can be said to have a tropical climate.
The number of methane lakes visible near Titan's southern pole is decidedly smaller than the number observed near the north pole. As the south pole is currently in summer and the north in winter, an emerging hypothesis is that methane rains onto the poles in winter and evaporates in summer.

Clouds

In September 2006, Cassini imaged a large cloud at a height of 40 km over Titan's north pole. Although methane is known to condense in Titan's atmosphere, the cloud was more likely to be ethane, as the detected size of the particles was only 1–3 micrometers and ethane can also freeze at these altitudes. In December, Cassini again observed cloud cover and detected methane, ethane and other organics. The cloud was over 2,400 km in diameter and was still visible during a following flyby a month later. One hypothesis is that it's currently raining (or, if cool enough, snowing) on the north pole; the downdrafts at high northern latitudes are strong enough to drive organic particles towards the surface. These were the strongest evidence yet for the long-hypothesised "methanological" cycle (analogous to Earth's hydrological cycle) on Titan. It is currently summer in Titan's southern hemisphere and will remain so until 2010, when Saturn's orbit, which governs the moon's motion, will tilt the northern hemisphere towards the Sun. When the seasons switch, ethane will begin to condense over the south pole.
Research models that match well with observations suggest that clouds on Titan cluster at preferred coordinates and that cloud cover varies by distance from the surface on different parts of the satellite. In the polar regions (above 60 degrees latitude), widespread and permanent ethane clouds appear in and above the troposphere; at lower latitudes, mainly methane clouds are found between 15 and 18 km, and are more sporadic and localized. In the summer hemisphere, frequent, thick but sporadic methane clouds seem to cluster around 40°.

Observation and exploration

Titan is never visible to the naked eye, but can be observed through small telescopes or strong binoculars. Amateur observation is difficult because of the proximity of the satellite to Saturn's brilliant globe and ring system; an occulting bar, covering part of the eyepiece and used to block the bright planet, greatly improves viewing. Titan has a maximum apparent magnitude of +7.9. This compares to +4.6 for the similarly sized Ganymede, in the Jovian system.
   Observations of Titan prior to the space age were limited. In 1907 Spanish astronomer Josep Comas Solá suggested that he'd observed darkening near the edges of Titan's disk and two round, white patches in its center. The deduction of an atmosphere by Kuiper in the 1940s was the next major observational event.
   The first probe to visit the Saturnian system was Pioneer 11 in 1979, which determined that Titan was likely too cold to support life. The craft took the first images of the moon (including some of it and Saturn together), but these were of low quality; the first-ever close-up of Titan was taken on September 2, 1979.
   Titan was examined by both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in 1980 and 1981, respectively. Voyager 1's course was diverted specifically to make a closer pass of Titan. Unfortunately, the craft didn't possess any instruments that could penetrate Titan's haze, an unforeseen factor. Many years later, intensive digital processing of images taken through Voyager 1''s orange filter did reveal hints of the light and dark features now known as Xanadu and Shangri-la, but by then they'd already been observed in the infrared by the Hubble Space Telescope. Voyager 2 took only a cursory look at Titan. The Voyager 2 team had the option of steering the spacecraft to take a detailed look at Titan or to use another trajectory which would allow it to visit Uranus and Neptune. Given the lack of surface features seen by Voyager 1, the latter plan was implemented.

Cassini–Huygens

Voyagers, Titan remained a body of mystery—a planet-like satellite shrouded in an atmosphere that makes detailed observation difficult. The intrigue that had surrounded Titan since the 17th-century observations of Christiaan Huygens and Giovanni Cassini was finally gratified by the spacecraft named in their honor.
The Cassini–Huygens spacecraft reached Saturn on July 1, 2004 and has begun the process of mapping Titan's surface by radar. A joint project of the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA, Cassini–Huygens, has proved a very successful mission. The Cassini probe flew by Titan on October 26 2004 and took the highest-resolution images ever of the moon's surface, at only 1,200 km, discerning patches of light and dark that would be invisible to the human eye from the Earth. Huygens landed on Titan on January 14, 2005, discovering that many of the moon's surface features seem to have been formed by flowing fluids at some point in the past. On July 22, 2006, Cassini made the first of a series of 21 planned, targeted, close fly-bys, each at only 950 km from Titan; the last is scheduled for May 12, 2008. Present liquid on the surface may have been found near the north pole, in the form of many lakes that were recently discovered by Cassini. Titan is also the second moon in the solar system to have a man-made object land on its surface.

Huygens landing site

The Huygens probe landed just off the easternmost tip of a bright region now called Adiri, where it photographed pale hills with dark "rivers" running down to a dark plain. Current understanding is that the hills (also referred to as highlands) are composed mainly of water ice. Dark organic compounds, created in the upper atmosphere by the ultraviolet radiation of the Sun, may rain from Titan's atmosphere. They are washed down the hills with the methane rain and are deposited on the plains over geological time scales.

Prebiotic conditions and possible life

Scientists believe that the atmosphere of early Earth was similar in composition to the current atmosphere on Titan. Many hypotheses have developed that attempt to bridge the step from chemical to biological evolution. The Miller-Urey experiment and several following experiments have shown that with an atmosphere similar to that of Titan and the addition of UV radiation, complex molecules and polymer substances like tholins can be generated. The reaction starts with dissociation of nitrogen and methane, forming hydrocyan and ethyne. Further reactions have been studied extensively.
   All of these experiments have led to the suggestion that enough organic material exists on Titan to start a chemical evolution analogous to what is thought to have started life on Earth. While the analogy assumes the presence of liquid water for longer periods than is currently observable, several theories suggest that liquid water from an impact could be preserved under a frozen isolation layer. It has also been observed that liquid ammonia oceans could exist deep below the surface; one model suggests an ammonia–water solution as much as 200 km deep beneath a water ice crust, conditions that, "while extreme by terrestrial standards, are such that life could indeed survive".
   Despite these biological possibilities, there are formidable obstacles to life on Titan, and any analogy to Earth is inexact. At a vast distance from the Sun, Titan is frigid (a fact exacerbated by the anti-greenhouse effect of its cloud cover), and its atmosphere lacks CO₂. Given these difficulties, the topic of life on Titan may be best described as an experiment for examining theories on conditions necessary prior to flourishing life on Earth. While life itself may not exist, the prebiotic conditions of the Titanian environment, and the possible presence of organic chemistry, remain of great interest in understanding the early history of the terrestrial biosphere. Using Titan as a prebiotic experiment involves not only observation through spacecraft, but laboratory experiment, and chemical and photochemical modelling on Earth.
   Conditions on Titan could become far more habitable in future. Six billion years from now, as the Sun becomes a red giant, surface temperatures could rise to ~200K, high enough for stable oceans of water/ammonia mixture to exist on the surface. As the Sun's ultraviolet output decreases, the haze in Titan's upper atmosphere will deplete, lessening the anti-greenhouse effect on the surface and enabling the greenhouse created by atmospheric methane to play a far greater role. These conditions together could create an environment agreeable to exotic forms of life, and will subsist for several hundred million years, long enough for at least primitive life to form.
   While the Cassini–Huygens mission wasn't equipped to provide evidence for biology or complex organics, it did support the theory of an environment on Titan that's similar, in some ways, to that of the primordial Earth. including orbiters, landers, balloons etc.

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